David Axelrod: Donald Trump ‘simply can’t hack it’
Donald Trump is trying to turn the page on what many political observers are calling the worst week of his presidential campaign, pointing out in a pair of Sunday interviews that the pundits have wrongly predicted his imminent demise plenty of times before.
But David Axelrod, former senior adviser to President Obama, believes this time may be different.
“For months, Trump had treated the campaign as his own personal open mic night, commanding the stage with his audacious improvisation,” Axelrod, now a CNN contributor, wrote in an op-ed published Sunday on the cable network’s website. “This past week, the process caught up with him.”
Like many others, Axelrod pointed to the Republican frontrunner’s refusal to suspend his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, after Lewandowski was charged with battery of a female reporter; Trump’s high-profile stumbles on issues ranging from national security to nuclear proliferation; and, most notably, his dizzying comments and clarifications on abortion.
“Pro-life Republicans, suspicious of Trump as a late convert to the cause, saw Trump’s lurching back and forth on the issue as yet another sign of his ideological promiscuousness,” Axelrod wrote. “But the real damage is more profound. In the last week, under a front-runner’s scrutiny and pressure, Trump looked like a guy who simply can’t hack it.”
The trouble is, in part, the result of Trump’s meteoric rise to the top of the Republican polls.
Axelrod thinks Trump’s bad week is a bad sign for his campaign. (Photos: AP/File)
“The better you do, the longer you go, the greater the scrutiny,” noted Axelrod, who served as chief strategist for both of Obama’s successful presidential campaigns. “The media analyzes and parses every word with a greater seriousness and intensity when spoken by a likely nominee for president of the United States.”
It’s unclear whether Trump’s “horrendous week” will derail his bid for the GOP nomination, Axelrod said, because it is “unlikely” to change the minds of “Trump zealots,” the “35 percent of the Republican primary base who seem unshakably committed.”
But, according to Axelrod, it will undoubtedly dent Trump’s chances come November should he emerge as the party’s nominee:
He would enter the general election with significantly lower public approval ratings than any major party nominee in U.S. history, relieving likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton of that dubious distinction.
This week, the MRI of Trump’s soul, and of his preparedness to serve as president and commander in chief, began to come into sharper focus.
And while his loyal base may have been unbothered, much of the rest of America was alarmed at what it showed.
While defending Lewandowski’s actions last week, Trump suggested former campaign managers like Axelrod, Karl Rove and David Plouffe had been even more “physical” than Lewandowski in protecting their candidates from reporters.
“I guarantee you they did, probably did stuff that was more physical than this,” Trump said on “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday. “More physical, because this [was] not even physical.”
All three dismissed Trump’s claim.
“I can’t think of any situation even remotely comparable,” Axelrod wrote in an email to Politico. “When it came to interaction with people, we pretty much confined ourselves to hugs and handshakes.”
